eventy of them. And, lastly, just under Morgan's north side,
close on the channel's eastern edge, rode, with her three small
gunboats, the _Tennessee_, ugly to look at but worse to meet,
waiting, watching, as up here in Fort Powell, smiling at the scurviness
of their assignment, watched and waited Kincaid's Battery.

Upstairs the new Steve gently wailed.

"Let me!" cried Anna, and ran.

Constance drew out Mandeville's newspaper. Miranda smiled despairingly.

"I wish, now," sighed the sister, "we'd shown it when we got it. I've
had enough of keeping things from Nan Callender. Of course, even among
our heroes in prison, there still may be a 'Harry Renard'; but it's far
more likely that someone's telegraphed or printed 'Hilary Kinkaid' that
way; for there _was_ a Herry Renard, Steve says, a captain, in Harper's
calvary, who months ago quietly died in one of our _own
hospitals_--at Lauderdale. Now, at headquarters, Steve says, they're
all agreed that the name isn't a mite more suggestive than the pure
daring of the deed, and that if they had to guess who did it they'd
every one guess Hilary Kincaid."

She spread the story out on her knee: Exchange of prisoners having
virtually ceased, a number of captive Confederate officers had been
started up the Mississippi from New Orleans, _under_ a heavy _but
unwary_ guard, on a "tin-clad" steamer, to wear out the rest of the war
in a Northern prison. Forbidden to gather even in pairs, they had yet
moved freely about, often passing each other closely enough to exchange
piecemeal counsels unnoticed, and all at once, at a tap of the boat's
bell had sprung, man for man, upon their keepers and instantly were
masters of them, of them, of their arms stacked on the boiler-deck and
of the steamboat, which they had promptly run ashore on the East
Louisiana side and burned. So ran the tale, and so broke off. Ought Anna
to be told it, or not?

"No," said the sister. "After all, why should we put her again through
all those sufferings that so nearly killed her after Shiloh?"

"If he would only--"

"Telegraph? How do we know he hasn't?"

Next morning the two unencumbered Callenders went down the bay. But they
found no need to leave the boat. A series of mishaps delayed her, the
tide hindered, rain fell, and at length she was told to wait for orders
and so lay all night at anchor just off Fort Gaines, but out of the
prospective line of fire from the foe newly entrenched behind it. The
ra